Bryan moved his muscular shoulders as though against an invisible resistance. Then, slowly, still fighting that resistance, he reached into the breast pocket of his rumpled tweed jacket and produced a pencil and a wrinkled but otherwise clean envelope. Most reporters carried notepads about with them; some even went in for stenographers' shorthand notebooks. But to Bryan news was something more than mere details. It was a thing of human and emotional qualities, and these he carried in his head like songs—some gay and humorous, many more tragic and sad. This characteristic had given his by-line its great popularity with Courier readers. When he needed to remember details at all—comparatively unimportant facts like dates and numbers—he recorded them on envelopes.

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